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The world of Street Racing Syndicate is akin to the first ten minutes of 2Fast 2Furious; drivers of absurdly colored cars race around city streets, safety precautions be damned, for huge stacks of Benjamins and the adoration of girls. It's deliciously tacky, while still having some good gameplay.
Starting with just enough money for a car and some parts, the player explores the strangely shiny city streets looking for money and girls. Actually, the map is an amalgamation of three cites that look vaguely like LA, Philadelphia, and Miami. The player can conveniently hit 'Z' to jump to any point instantly, avoiding potential car damage and encounters with the police. There aren’t many reasons to actually drive around manually, except for merely getting familiar with the streets you'll be racing on, or to get used to a new car. There are a few drivers rolling around town that can be challenged for money, but it's probably more productive to stick to the main races.
There are three main objectives:
While it's not quite possible to bet your girlfriend on a race and achieve the highest level of misogyny, girlfriends can still be lost to rival racers at a crew meet. The logical thing to do is find and challenge him to win the girlfriend back, right? Because she's your property, right? As far as the other racers go, most of them have implausible white-guy names like Glen, Eddie, and Rob, and they talk like, "Yo, throw me those bills, g," in equally implausible white-guy voices. It's funny at first, but then I realized how painfully close it strikes to home.
There are many, many different parts available to modify a car with - brand name engine modifications, body kits, nitros, tires, everything. It's entirely possible to bring a car to the garage and spend ten or twenty thousand dollars on parts (and maybe an absurd set of decals for good measure).
There's a very cool selection of cars that one can get attached to; some favorites include the Evo VIII, RX-8, Skyline, and Sprinter Trueno. There are allegedly 50 cars, but some are just slightly different versions of others. Still, though, it's a good selection. The cars show actual damage too, which is nearly unheard of in a game with authentic vehicles. Prepare to cringe at every expensive-sounding shattering noise.
There are quite a few notes to make about the environments and play control. Most of the game is set in city streets with sidewalks, sharp-angled turns, and civilian traffic. The game tracks cool moves like drifts, near misses, and other driving feats, and rewards the player with 'respect' points (and maybe X2 and X3 combos). Respect points are necessary to enter some of the challenges, or to win over a potential girlfriend. It's not very hard to get some good respect points with a combination of something like two-wheel-driving coming off of a sidewalk combined with a drift, but each car handles differently. It's actually a bit tough to get a feel for some cars or know how far they can be pushed before they spin; there isn't really enough feedback through the controller rumble, which would be a great asset for those well-accustomed to other racing games. Some cars seem almost undrivable at first after getting used to another.
The ads for SRS boast awesome online features, like wagering vehicles in online races. That doesn't include the GameCube version, unfortunately - there's only a very, very bare-bones two-player mode. There's not even any wagering! It's pretty boring. At least you can use your customized vehicles. In every other aspect, though the GameCube version keeps up with or surpasses the other versions, especially in the department of smooth graphics. Even screen-in-screen billboards look like they're moving at 60 fps.
Sure, SRS is pretty silly, really, but the racing is genuinely fun. The GameCube version suffers a bit without any LAN or online play modes, but even without, it offers a fair amount of fun.
